“Go with Dylan, and I’ll look after Dad,” Gigi says, letting me go.
I turn to her with a glare. “Excuse me?”
She leans over so only I can hear her. “Come on, Ro. You like him. He’s saved you twice now. Let him baby you and grovel all night for your forgiveness. After that, if you want to kick his ass to the curb, at least you’re doing it on your terms,” she whispers.
I stare at her, my lips twisting. “I don’t know.”
“Ro, please,” he begs at my side.
Gigi winks. “And let the groveling commence. Don’t go easy on him.”
“I don’t know if I’m in the mood to play hardball, sis.”
“You do whatever you want,” she tells me, bumping into me with her shoulder. “Just get some rest and try to relax. Make him rub your feet or some shit.”
Dylan stands, holding out a hand to me. “Come on, baby.”
I turn toward him, my face not soft or friendly. After staring at him for a few seconds, I slide my hand into his, letting him pull me up from the ground. “Don’t you have to work?” I ask.
“Fuck no. I was only here as an extra hand as a favor. It’s not like it’s busy.”
“Don’t get any ideas about tonight. I’m still pissed at you,” I remind him.
“I know,” he says, but instead of letting me walk, he lifts me into his arms and starts walking toward his brother’s truck. “I have a lot to make up for and even more explaining to do. Just give me tonight to do it.”
I want to say something, but it feels too good being in his arms. For the first time, I finally relax, letting the safety of his size and warmth pull me under.
Dylan has me…
I am physically safe, but my heart is not.
20
DYLAN
We’re almost back to Rosie’s apartment, and we haven’t spoken a word to each other since I started the engine. I’m so angry—at myself, at the man who attacked her for a second time, at the world.
Hell, I’m even pissed at my father for fucking up my head and my heart so badly, I do dumb shit like pushing away my chance at something freaking spectacular.
“What happened back there?” she asks me.
I glance over at Rosie as the lights from oncoming cars sweep across her tear-stained face. “Don’t worry about it, wildcat. Between your family and me, he’ll never lay hands on you again.”
“I’ve heard that before,” she mutters.
I tighten my fingers around the steering wheel as I remember the terror in her eyes when the door opened. “I have no doubt what I started, your uncles and father finished.”
“You mean, what I started?”
The smallest smile spreads across my lips at her words. “What you started,” I correct my statement. “We just came in to clean up afterward, something that should’ve been done the first time he laid hands on you.”
Rosie places her elbow on the door, resting her cheek against her fingers with her gaze straight ahead. “I didn’t even see him there before I went to the bathroom. It’s as if he materialized out of nowhere like a nightmare, waiting for his moment to strike.”
“I didn’t see him either,” I tell her, playing back the time I spent at the door until I saw Rosie walk in and coming up blank. He must’ve seen her or me first, deciding to lurk in the back, waiting on the perfect moment to strike.
“I thought he was you at first,” she says.
Her words are like a punch to my fucking gut. “I’d never hurt you like that, Ro.”
“He didn’t hurt me right away. He caught me off guard, wrapping his arms around my waist. I didn’t try to get away, thinking it was you behind me, trying to make amends. But I had been so pissed at you, I wasn’t paying attention to who was around me, and well…you know what happened.”
I smack the steering wheel with the meaty part of my palm, pissed at myself for being such an asshole.
She startles at my sudden movement, doubling my guilt.
“This is my fault,” I tell her. “If I hadn’t…”
She reaches across the cab of the truck, placing her fingers on my forearm. “What happened tonight isn’t your fault, Dylan.”
“If I hadn’t pissed you off, you wouldn’t have been there. Or if you were, I would’ve been by your side.”
“If I weren’t pissed at you and you were by my side, you wouldn’t have gone to the bathroom with me. He still would’ve been waiting for me when I walked out of there alone,” she explains rationally and calmly, two things I’m not in this moment. “You can’t be with me every minute of every day.”
“Did he…” I swallow the words, finding any possibility of her being hurt again painful, and look back at her.
She shakes her head. “At first, I froze and then begged. But then I remembered what my dad taught me and used the training he drilled into us at a young age. I may not have the strength to last long, but I knew how to cause him enough pain in a short burst to allow myself an escape.”
“Fuck,” I hiss, hating that it’s something she had to be taught to do.
“We’re always taught to be on guard…as women.”
“That’s some crazy bullshit,” I grumble, gripping the steering wheel tighter to alleviate my anger.
She shrugs her shoulder closest to me. “Men have no clue what it’s like constantly looking over your shoulder, waiting for someone to try something.”
“I’ve never…”
“Of course you haven’t. You’re a man. It’s not like a woman is going to attack you out of nowhere and try to spear themselves on your dick. You’re the top of the food chain. You’re the predator and not the prey. If you lived your life like the prey, you’d have a whole new experience.”
“I had that life when I was a kid,” I whisper, realizing my father was the predator in my life for the first eighteen years until I’d had enough. But I never had to wonder who was preying on me. I only had to wonder when he would pounce, which was more often than I care to remember and have tried to block out.
“It’s the same for us, but for our entire lives. We can never grow out of it and can only learn how to defend ourselves from an attack. But instead of worrying only about being physically assaulted, we have to fear being raped too.”
I’ve never hated being a man until this moment. I’ve never put much thought into how women feel or what they worry about in different situations. I’ve never walked around looking over my shoulder, wondering if the next person I passed would be the one to put hands on me.
Growing up, I always knew who my attacker was going to be. The only thing I could do was try to read his moods, learning when he was most likely to strike and preparing myself for the inevitable onslaught. It took me over a decade to nail down the warning signs, but it never made the beatings any easier to take.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, my head swimming with so many thoughts about my past and her everyday reality.
“For what?” she asks
“That you have to walk around always looking over your shoulder because of assholes like me.”